Involuntary Resistance

Abstract

This paper problematizes the notion of “intent” through the concept of “involuntary resistance”. Departing from the narratives of employees in nursing homes in Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, we suggest that neoliberal norms and a local management that capitalizes on social hierarchies (sex, age, class, etc.) were the context of the strong biopolitical state management that occurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The friction between different forms of governing became a seedbed for an involuntary resistance with an unclear intent against the state recommendations. This sheds light upon the need to (re)frame the current dominance of specific types of knowledge that are constructed in the field of resistance. We suggest that new paths of thought are needed—within social sciences—that work towards a wider conceptualizing of resistance, which embraces practices that lie outside the common thought of dissent.